Taking Stock Of The Wreckage That Is The Miami Dolphins

Behold a franchise at its nadir

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There's only one way to impress against a team as bad as the Dolphins.

Updated at 4:26 PM EDT on Friday, Oct 28, 2011

You know what the worst part of this Dolphins season is? That there are still ten weeks left to go.

Not since Jim Zorn's final season in Washington have I seen a franchise come apart so early. Yes, I know the Rams and Colts are also winless and horrible. But the Rams are injured and the Colts had their QB/coach/GM/de facto owner ripped away from them at the last moment. Those teams have a pretty good idea of why they're so bad.

Ah, but the Dolphins. The Dolphins are dysfunctional in so many more amusing ways. They can't even begin to tell you why they're so awful. And now players are bickering over which one of them is the stinkiest:

It started when (RB Reggie) Bush said “We stink” after the Dolphins’ 18-15 loss to the Broncos on Sunday. That didn’t sit well with Dolphins safety Yeremiah Bell, who turned the tables on Bush.

"He stinks,” Bell said, according to Examiner.com.

Bush then made it clear that he does, indeed, stink, and that he didn't mean to point fingers. But at this point, it hardly matters if he points fingers because none of these people will be back next season. Not Bush. Not quarterback Matt Moore. And certainly not coach Tony Sparano, who should have been fired LAST season to avoid this complete waste of a year.

Ironically, it was Sparano who rescued the Dolphins from this exact kind of dysfunction after the notorious 1-15 season under Cam Cameron. Sparano came in that first season and led Miami to an incredible 11-5 season that included a division title, a feat that looks more and more like a fluke with each mounting 2011 loss. The Dolphins have gotten progressively worse during Sparano's tenure, and now they're a headless franchise, bereft of leadership at all key positions.

That will be corrected in the offseason, when the Dolphins hire Bill Cowher or Jon Gruden to take over and draft Andrew Luck or Landry Jones as their franchise QB for the next fifteen years. That's the beauty of the NFL. You can turn things around faster than you ever thought possible if you have the right coach and QB in place.

But hoo boy, does that moment feel like a long way off right now. For now, there are still ten more weeks of hapless play and meaningless bickering to go. And even the prospect of winning Andrew Luck doesn't make the long slog any less painful.